2015 AssetBuilder Annual Letter

Some of my friends don’t feel good about investing. They want to make money. But they won’t support businesses that build missiles, hook kids on cigarettes or extract air polluting fossil fuels. That rules out most actively managed funds and indexes. They don’t discriminate against specific types of companies.

Q. I am a 78-year-old widow and would like your opinion on what makes sense when it comes to car buying? I have always paid cash. But a number of my friends lease and replace cars every two or three years. My husband always said leasing only made sense if you could write off the lease as a business expense. Is that still true? My 11-year old Camry has 85,000 miles and is due for replacement. —A.S., by email read more…

For a moment after I read “How Many Mutual Funds Routinely Rout the Market? Zero” in The New York Times, I was jealous of Scott and Andrew. It was a satisfying I-told-you-so moment for them. Alas, I am not a financial writer. But as I started thinking about managed funds, index funds, and common sense, I realized that the Times article offers a nice parallel in medicine. Think of it as the Healthy Couch Potato Lifestyle. read more…

Imagine you are in your 60s, looking over your shoulder for signs that your job will soon disappear. Imagine you don’t have a pension. Imagine you don’t have much money in your 401(k) plan. Indeed, you may have next to nothing. What you have is your home, one you have lived in for a long time- long enough to have paid off the mortgage. read more…